Handcrafted Holiday - Mason jar lanterns

Monday, January 14, 2013

Right now is so dark. It’s dark when you get up, and it’s getting dark by the time you are ready to make dinner. I decided to invite a bunch of friends over to make lanterns for these dark days and it really brightened things up! (Pun completely intended.) It was so much fun I think I should share a little how-to on here so you can make some too!

You need:

A mason jar (any size works, but we have found that the smaller ones light up better)

Regular school glue

tissue paper

paint brush

stiff gauge wire (I used 10 - 20)

beads that will fit on the wire

Needle nose pliers

1. First I ripped the tissue paper into small strips. I painted a portion of the jar with the glue and laid the tissue onto it, painting it down so it was saturated. This will become hard when it is completely dry. Slowly cover with tissue, overlapping a bit until you have a tissue layer on the outside of your jar.

Each of the kids followed my lead with that and they started to come up with some of the most beautiful color combinations! Flower paper laid over pink paper, and red laid over blue to make purple. Those are the parts that make it look like stained glass!

2. Once the outside of your jar is covered with paper, paint over any portions that are not saturated. Be careful! Your paper may rip.

3. Let that dry completely. (We cheated and placed ours in a 150* oven for a half an hour. It worked like a charm!)

4. When dry and cool, wrap the neck of the jar in wire, keeping it loose. Wrap a piece of wire up and over the jar to make a handle.

5. Leave one side unattached and place beads on the wire.

Everyone loved this part! The boys even got super creative and it was neat to see all the different patterns that they used.

6. Secure the second side of the wire to the loop around the jar neck and then tighten the loop so it will not slip off. That’s it! You have a lantern!

These are beautiful and fun. I used real fire tealights and LED tealights and both lit the lanterns up beautifully!